Table Of ContentPope to Burney, 1714–1779
transitions
General Editor:Julian Wolfreys
Published titles
ORWELL TO THE PRESENT: LITERATURE IN ENGLAND, 1945–2000 John
Brannigan
CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE, 1337–1580 SunHee Kim Gertz
POPE TO BURNEY, 1714–1779: SCRIBLERIANS TO BLUESTOCKINGS Moyra
Haslett
PATER TO FORSTER, 1873–1924 Ruth Robbins
BURKE TO BYRON, BARBAULD TO BAILLIE, 1790–1830 Jane Stabler
MILTON TO POPE, 1650–1720 Kay Gilliland Stevenson
SIDNEY TO MILTON, 1580–1660 Marion Wynne-Davies
BATAILLE Fred Botting and Scott Wilson
NEW HISTORICISM AND CULTURAL MATERIALISM John Brannigan
POSTMODERN NARRATIVE THEORY Mark Currie
FORMALIST CRITICISM AND READER-RESPONSE THEORY Todd F. Davis and
Kenneth Womack
QUEER THEORIES Donald E. Hall
MARXIST LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY Moyra Haslett
LOUIS ALTHUSSER Warren Montag
RACE Brian G. Niro
JACQUES LACAN Jean-Michel Rabaté
LITERARY FEMINISMS Ruth Robbins
DECONSTRUCTION ●DERRIDA Julian Wolfreys
Forthcoming titles
IMAGE TO APOCALYPSE, 1910–1945 Jane Goldman
DICKENS TO HARDY, 1837–1884 Julian Wolfreys
TERRY EAGLETON David Alderson
JULIA KRISTEVA AND LITERARY THEORY Megan Becker-Leckrone
NATIONAL IDENTITY John Brannigan
HÉLÈNE CIXOUS: WRITING AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE Abigail Bray
HOMI BHABHA Eleanor Byrne
GENDER Claire Colebrook
IDEOLOGY James Decker
POSTMODERNISM ●POSTMODERNITY Martin McQuillan
ROLAND BARTHES Martin McQuillan
MODERNITY David Punter
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LITERATURE Nicholas Rand
SUBJECTIVITY Ruth Robbins
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY Malini Johan Schueller
TRANSGRESSION Julian Wolfreys
transitions Series
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P o p e t o B u r n e y ,
1 7 1 4–1 7 7 9
Scriblerians to Bluestockings
Moyra Haslett
© Moyra Haslett 2003
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ISBN 978-0-333-69610-1 hardback
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haslett, Moyra.
Pope to Burney, 1714–1779 : Scriblerians to bluestockings /
Moyra Haslett.
p. cm. — (Transitions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-333-69610-1 — ISBN 978-0-333-69611-8 (pbk.)
1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2.
Literature and society—Great Britain—History—18th century. 3. Pope,
Alexander, 1688–1744—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Burney, Fanny,
1752–1840—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Literature—Societies,
etc.—History—18th century. 6. Book clubs—Great Britain—History—
18th century. 7. Great Britain—Intellectual life—18th century.
8. Conversation—History—18th century. 9. Conversation in literature.
10. Scriblerus Club. 11. Intertextuality. I. Title. II. Transitions (Palgrave
Macmillan (Firm))
PR448.S64H37 2003
820.9’005—dc21 2003045989
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
C o n t e n t s
General Editor’s Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
Introduction Defining the eighteenth century:
public sphere conversations 1
Literary groups and coteries: from the Scriblerians
to the Bluestockings 6
Collaborative writing 13
The emergence of a reading public and
subscription publishing 17
The circulating library, the book club and literary
reviewing 22
Conversational circles and texts 25
Part I Conversational Forms 31
1. Literary Communities 33
Literary groups 34
Communities of readers and spectators 50
Testing sociability: speaking to strangers 78
2. Social / Textual Forms 85
The novel 87
Textual letters: the familiar letter, the verse
epistle and epistolary fiction 99
The dialogue and other conversational forms 114
The periodical 121
The republic of letters 131
v
vi Contents
3. Female Communities 138
Women’s place in the public sphere 139
Imaginative female communities 144
Women’s involvement in the creation
of the ‘public sphere’ 159
‘Almost a Scriblerian’: the case of
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 162
The public emergence of the woman writer 168
Part II Textual Conversations 173
Textual Conversations: Introduction 175
4. The Dunciad: Associating with ‘Republica
Grubstreetaria’ 178
5. Gulliver’s Travels: Ceding Interpretations 193
6. The Political Controversies of Pamela 209
Textual Conversations: Conclusion 226
7. Afterword: Continuing the Conversation 235
Chronology 240
Key Concepts and Contexts 262
Annotated Bibliography 267
Bibliography 273
Index 295
G e n e r a l E d i t o r ’ s P r e f a c e
Transitions: transition-, n. of action. 1. A passing or passage from
one condition, action or (rarely) place, to another. 2. Passage in
thought, speech, or writing, from one subject to another. 3. a.The
passing from one note to another b.The passing from one key to
another, modulation. 4. The passage from an earlier to a later stage
of development or formation...change from an earlier style to a
later; a style of intermediate or mixed character...the historical
passage of language from one well-defined stage to another.
The aim of Transitions is to explore passages and movements in
language, literature and culture from Chaucer to the present day.
The series also seeks to examine the ways in which the very idea of
transition affects the reader’s sense of period so as to address anew
questions of literary history and periodisation. The writers in this
series unfold the cultural and historical mediations of literature
during what are commonly recognised as crucial moments in the
development of English literature, addressing, as the OED puts it,
the ‘historical passage of language from one well-defined stage to
another’.
Recognising the need to contextualise literary study, the authors
offer close readings of canonical and now marginalised or over-
looked literary texts from all genres, bringing to this study the
rigour of historical knowledge and the sophistication of theoreti-
cally informed evaluations of writers and movements from the last
700 years. At the same time as each writer, whether Chaucer or
Shakespeare, Milton or Pope, Byron, Dickens, George Eliot, Virginia
Woolf or Salman Rushdie, is shown to produce his or her texts
within a discernible historical, cultural, ideological and philosoph-
ical milieu, the text is read from the vantage point of recent theo-
retical interests and concerns. The purpose in bringing theoretical
knowledge to the reading of a wide range of works is to demonstrate
vii
viii General Editor’s Preface
how the literature is always open to transition, whether in the
instance of its production or in succeeding moments of its critical
reception.
The series desires to enable the reader to transform her/his own
reading and writing transactions by comprehending past develop-
ments. Each book in the second tranche of the series offers a ped-
agogical guide to the poetics and politics of particular eras, as well
as to the subsequent critical comprehension of periods and
periodisation. As well as transforming the cultural and literary past
by interpreting its transition from the perspective of the critical and
theoretical present, each study enacts transitional readings of a
number of literary texts, all of which are themselves conceivable as
having effected transition at the moments of their first appearance.
The readings offered in these books seek, through close critical
reading, historical contextualisation and theoretical engagement,
to demonstrate certain possibilities in reading to the student
reader.
It is hoped that the student will find this series liberating because
the series seeks to move beyond rigid definitions of period. What is
important is the sense of passage, of motion. Rather than providing
a definitive model of literature’s past, Transitionsaims to place you
in an active dialogue with the writing and culture of other eras, so
as to comprehend not only how the present reads the past, but how
the past can read the present.
Julian Wolfreys
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
I would never have written a book of this kind if I had not been first
excited and engaged by eighteenth-century literature through the
teaching of Ian Campbell Ross. He it was who taught me to recog-
nise the innovative, experimental and modern nature of eight-
eenth-century literature – the qualities which continue to draw me
to the period. My first thanks then go to him as a teacher and as a
friend. The writing of the book also owes more specific debts: to the
series editor, Julian Wolfreys, for his continued encouragement and
support; to friends and colleagues, Julian Cowley, Glynis Ridley,
Ruth Robbins, and Paul Simpson in particular, for suggestions,
advice, and conversations about the eighteenth century; and to
former students of eighteenth-century literature at the University
of Luton and Queen’s University Belfast for their enthusiasm and
interest. Thanks too to Gillian Russell who kindly allowed me to
read a pre-publication draft of the introduction to Romantic
Sociability (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Florence Gray, of
Queen’s University Library, has arranged countless interlibrary
loans with exemplary efficiency and patience. That the book is
completed at all is partly due to her help. I am also grateful to
Margaret Bartley at Palgrave Macmillan for commissioning me to
write the book, to Anna Sandeman and Sonya Barker for seeing the
book through to publication and to Judy Marshall for her careful
corrections of the typescript. My partner, John Brannigan, has
spent more time with this book than anyone else, myself apart,
and, despite claiming to know relatively little about the eighteenth
century, continues to be my most acute critic. My thanks to him for
always reminding me about the bigger picture – both within and
without the book.
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